in reply to Re^2: grabbing chunks of text
in thread grabbing chunks of text

.* is too permissive. You could use a complicated trick to fix this, but it's easiest to extract the blocks then to filter out the ones you don't want. 

@blocks = grep / type =/, /:\w.*?(?=:\w)/sg;

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If you want to break the blocks at the start of the line, the following will do that for you: 
@blocks = grep / type =/, /^[^:]*:\w.*\n(?:[^:]*: .*\n)*/mg;

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It also demonstrates how lookahead and the non-greedy modifier can be avoided here.

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Re^4: grabbing chunks of text
by spencerd (Novice) on Mar 10, 2010 at 19:12 UTC
    This is a bit crazy and I dont understand it completly I just pieced it together from stuff people posted on chatterbox seems to work though 
     my @blocks = $file_contents =~ /:\w(?:(?!:\w).)*?type\s*=(?:(?!:\w).)
+*?(?=:\w)/sg;

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[d/l]

      This is a bit crazy and I dont understand it completly

      That's the complicated trick I mentioned. I don't see any advantage to doing it this way.

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